Segacs’s World I Know

In the meantime, here’s a random New York City photo:

Times Square at Night

Back soon!

That’s the sound of all the things happening in the world that are whizzing by as I attempt to segway from a business trip into a long weekend road trip.

The government survived by one vote, some Palestinian terrorists are firing mortars at Israelis, and the new Star Wars movie came out in theatres. No, I haven’t seen it yet. No, I’m not particularly fussed about it.

Have a good long weekend, everyone. Back Tuesday.

Belinda Stronach has jumped ship to the Liberals, abandoning the Conservatives at a crucial moment:

top member of Canada’s opposition Conservatives unexpectedly defected to the ruling Liberals on Tuesday, giving the minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin a better chance of surviving a crucial budget vote this week.

Belinda Stronach, a leading light in the Conservative Party, joined Martin’s cabinet as the minister of human resources and will vote with the government on the budget on Thursday. If Martin loses, an election will be called.

Stronach, who ran for the Conservative Party leadership but lost to Stephen Harper in a landslide, certainly had some ideological differences with the rest of her party. She supported gay marriage in a party firmly opposed. She supported more liberal social policies in general. She claimed that the Tories don’t understand middle Canada – and she has a point there. In fact, she had represented the hope that the Tories would move closer to the middle, but her hopes seem to be dashed now.

But the timing of this switch was no coincidence. Stronach saw an opportunity (the budget vote), named her price (a cabinet posting), and made the leap at a time when she had the most to gain. The current math has the smart money on the Liberals winning the budget vote now, thanks to Belinda’s defection. After all, she in effect is adding two votes to the Liberal side of the fence, by switching her vote against to a vote for.

Will Stronach’s constituents support her decision and re-elect her? Or will they view her as a disloyal turncoat?

More importantly, will people still describe her as “Canada’s answer to Ann Coulter”? (She never was in the first place, but that’s besides the point).

People are right to call it only a small step. Women in Kuwait can now vote and run for office but they are still bound by strict Islamic laws and in most ways are still second-class citizens. Not to mention the sorry state of democracy in Kuwait, where voting really doesn’t mean much for men or women.

Still, even a small step forward is very good news.

(Hat tip: Debbye).

NBC’s announced a new comedy for this fall starring Jason Lee, who has yet to do much of anything that isn’t brilliant. Here’s hoping…

Wayne Gretzky for Prime Minister. Who’s with me?

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have a reasonably good chance of bringing down the government and forcing an election. They have a much lower chance of winning an election that they force, seeing as how they won’t win any seats in Quebec and they’d need massive landslides virtually everywhere else even to form a minority government.

But even if they do win and get into power and form a government, what will prevent the Liberals from doing the exact same thing to them as they are now doing to the Liberals? After all, any government the Conservatives form is bound to be a minority. And the Liberals won’t be too favourably disposed towards a Conservative government. These things work both ways.

Harper’s only choice would be to form an alliance with someone and it can’t be the Libs or the NDP. That leaves the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservatives’ de facto ally in the non-confidence motion in the first place.

Why do I sense a Liberal campaign strategy coming on with an “A vote for the Conservatives is a vote for the Bloc” theme?

Where were Newsweek’s fact-checkers on this story?

Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.

Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.

On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.

But… I thought the media was all controlled by an international Zionist conspiracy. Why would the Arab world trust it in the first place?

Canada’s 4-3 win over Russia will put us in the gold medal game:

Canada jumped out to a four-goal lead and then held off a feverish Russian rally for a 4-3 semifinal win Saturday at the IIHF world championship.

You know, I was starting to get used to the lack of hockey. But this is starting to make me realize how much I miss it.

Update: We lost. In a disappointing 3-0 shutout. Ouch! I guess we’ll have to settle for the silver.